


All That You're Not Saying

by kho



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 11:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6115430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“God, Danny, you’re so beautiful,” he breathes, because it’s not something he would ever in a million years say but it’s what he feels and the words happen without his permission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That You're Not Saying

**Author's Note:**

> Set nowish, no specific spoilers. Just a regular lazy Sunday afternoon of nothingness that's suddenly not.

It’s so easy to accuse Danny of being angry all the time. It’s not the truth, it’s just easy. Danny is a man of extremes is the thing. When he’s angry he’s so angry, and when he’s sad he’ll break your soul. When he’s happy he brings the light of a thousand suns into the room and lights up the deepest, darkest, coldest part of you and makes you forget it was ever in the shadows to begin with.

So sitting there next to him at the picnic table on the lanai, cold beers sweating on the table, empty dinner plates shoved to the side forgotten, Danny’s knee pressing against Steve’s thigh as he props his head up in a bent arm and grins that million wattage easy, loose smile that makes his eyes crinkle and his nose wrinkle, Steve is utterly and completely swept the hell off his feet.

“God, Danny, you’re so beautiful,” he breathes, because it’s not something he would ever in a million years say but it’s what he feels and the words happen without his permission.

Danny’s smile falters, one half of his mouth turning down just the slightest, and Steve can’t define it, if it’s confusion or anger or sadness or what, but it’s not the smile and he just wants the smile back. The smile is warmth and home and here and now and Danny and he wants it there always.

“Beautiful,” Danny repeats, but he says it in that Danny, Jersey way of his, emphasis on beauty and followed up by ful, and he’s not frowning but it’s not that full 1000 watts and Steve wants to eat glass for making it go away. Danny snorts out a laugh, but it’s kind of forced. Steve can tell, because a true Danny laugh is this braying honking thing that’s not pretty and not attractive except for how it absolutely is in every way that counts as far as Steve is concerned. “Why I gotta be beautiful, why not ruggedly handsome, or good lookin’, or a fine young gentleman?”

“Your face,” Steve says, because this must be a dream, because Steve can’t talk like this, Steve _doesn’t_ talk like this, so obviously this isn’t real. “It’s just… I can’t speak.”

Danny’s smile comes back, not fully but growing, and Steve feels his stomach flip. “Babe?”

Steve blows out a breath and looks away. “It hurts when you say that.”

Danny’s knee knocks against Steve’s as he shifts to sit up straighter. “What hurts?”

“My Dad called my Mom babe,” Steve says, squinting into the sun. “Babe means I love you, it means…” He shrugs. “It just makes me feel things.”

“Things that hurt,” Danny asks softly.

“Things that hurt to not have, yeah,” Steve says, bending his head forward and scrubbing the back of his neck. “Babe means I love you, and together, and family, and when you’re gone it hurts and it means when Mom blew up in her car my Dad died too because none of us knew it was a lie, and it just means things.”

“Babe, where I come from it's just something we say, like you guys say brah, like people say dude,” Danny says, his hand coming to rest on Steve’s arm. “But with you, it just.  For me, when I say it to you... It does mean that,” he says quietly. “It does means I love you, and family, and together. You have those things in me. I thought you knew that.”

“Does it mean I can sit out here and watch the sunset and hold your hand,” Steve asks, still looking away but covering Danny’s hand on his arm with his free hand. “Does it mean I can kiss you if I want to?”

“Steve,” Danny says, and Steve’s so afraid he’s going to leave, just get up and walk away, but he doesn’t move. His hand is so warm under Steve’s. “What is this? What’s going on? Why’d you get sad all of a sudden?”

“I’m no good, Danny,” Steve says. “And I’m lousy at words. I can’t express. I want to.” He sighs and messes up his hair in frustration and just keeps looking at the table. “I just feel, Danny, I feel and I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Babe.”

“Stop,” Steve says, closing his eyes. “Stop saying it if you don’t mean it how I hear it.”

“I’m saying I do,” Danny says softly. “It means yes, okay. It means you can hold my hand and kiss me if you want to. It means I’d fucking die too if you died. It means all those things, Steve.”

Steve looks over at Danny, smiling, happy Danny, 1000 watt Danny, and shakes his head. “You’re just so beautiful and I don’t know what to do with that.”

Danny’s eyes search his face. “Is that you saying you’re afraid to break me?” Danny turns his hand up and threads his fingers between Steve’s, gripping his hand firmly in his own. “Not a daffodil, babe.”

“Us,” Steve says. “Afraid of breaking us.”

Danny’s snorted laugh this time is not forced. “You, my friend? Also not a daffodil.”

“Everything I love turns to shit,” Steve says, squinting out at the sun because squinting at Danny is just too damn much. “Happens enough times you start to think you’re the thing that turned it into that, Danny.”

“Yeah, well guess what, Steve,” Danny says. “First of all, bullshit. And second of all, you’ve had me for five years, and I ain’t turned into shit yet.”

Steve laughs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Danny says, tugging on Steve’s hand. “Would you just… look at me?”

Steve finally does, meets Danny’s electric blue eyes that see straight through to his soul and always have and always will. “I don’t know why I started this today.”

Danny grins. “Well apparently because today I’m especially beautiful.”

“I was trying to,” Steve starts and stops. He opens his mouth and holds Danny’s hand tighter. “I was trying to say your face, when you look like that at me, when you smile like that, it’s like it hits me… it’s like a physical…” he says, and all he can do is touch a hand to his heart and swallow because words fail him and there’s a lump in his throat and Danny’s always been able to read him anyway. “You know?”

“Steven?”

Steve closes his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Would you just kiss me already?” Danny’s close enough for Steve to feel his breath on his face.

Steve opens his eyes and looks at Danny’s smiling face and nods, leaning in and pressing his lips to Danny’s. A small, gigantic, huge, tiny, chaste, brief kiss. Warmth against warmth. Danny’s soul transferring into Steve’s and Steve’s into Danny’s. Nothing and everything all at once.

“All that shit you’re not saying,” Danny says quietly when Steve pulls back, licking his lips. “All that I love you so much it hurts and I can’t figure out how to say it in words?”

Steve nods. “Yeah?”

“Me too,” Danny says, leaning in close again. “You fucking goof.”

“Hey Danny?”

Danny laughs. “Yeah?”

Steve laughs and leans that last little bit in. “Shut up already.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story was born out of the fact that I cannot get over Scott's smile. Or his eyes. Or his eye crinkles. Or just his general facial type area just, overall. Period. But it's also born out of the fact that I have one unrequited love situation in my life in which he also happens to be a very, very good friend, and he calls me babe, and honey, and sweetie, and it... It DOES hurt. He has no idea it hurts, but it makes me think and feel a certain type of way, but he's married to someone who is just so incredibly NOT ME. So. So I'm getting some catharsis through Steve lol.
> 
>  
> 
> You can find me on tumblr here under [@lovethesnark](http://lovethesnark.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Fanfiction Website  
> MOST of my fic is not on AO3, though all of my H5O and beyond is as AO3 didn't exist yet and it was too much to archive. It can be found on my website at [LoveTheSnark.com](http://www.lovethesnark.com).


End file.
